slang

The Fantasia reference (Disney animated film from 1940) was quite intentional. Several mentioned that vibe in youtube comments (as did Colacunt above). The video is not very egotistical as the balance between Lana and the orchestra is very good. I googled 2 tears in solidarity and got a (very remote) Boston Marathon reference, but who can say? When you consider the two other videos of hers, recently released, I'm not too disappointed in the lack of flamboyance here. It sort of looks like something MTV wouldn't touch with the proverbial 10-foot pole (and maybe that's its point). So it will be kind of interesting if they end up showing it sometime.

So if something DOES kill you, does that make you stronger? The only sense I can make out of that would be it makes you stronger if it forces you to reinvent yourself (May-->Lizzy-->Lana). Still I wish all her inventions were out there taking hits in the pop music scene (even if the painful kind). It could only make pop music stronger. I think Lana's fanbase is actually growing on her earlier works on youtube, so it perplexes me she seems down on them. May Jailer was never attempted commercially, and Lizzy Grant was kind of mismanaged and aborted commercially. So I wish the words "unsuccessful" and "failure" could be qualified or probed a little more in these interviews to get a sense of what happened. Can anybody really know how much AKA Lizzy Grant would have sold if it hadn't been pulled? The article also doesn't ask about the intentions for the leaks/unreleased, which is another mystery, but may imply most interviewers don't know about them? Still a good article, though.

Well, if it’s the only way to get the leak officially produced, I’m happy with it. Maybe LDR will still do the backing vocals. So the leaks came from somebody hacking LDR’s email. That story makes sense, if we think that LDR had a bunch of songs in her email, just because, at times, she wanted to make it more as a songwriter than as a performer. BTW, there is a Youtube video of BMF (Nicola Parolin's) that cites "Written by Edward Gallegos", so maybe this song isn’t entirely Lana’s. The bad thing about leaks (other than people imprint on them as definitive versions) is that we know nothing about how many of them were produced. For example, does anyone even know if she uses live or virtualized musicians on the Break My Fall demo. This may be a stupid question, but I really don’t know how good the technology is.

The most interesting thing about the question is nailing down why people get headaches thinking about it. BTD is largely “retro” in the Hollywood movie score sense (30s and 40s), with exceptions (e.g. National Anthem, This is what makes us girls); AKA is “retro” in a blues/jazz and a 50s/60s rock sense, again with exceptions (e.g. Brite Lites, Gramma). Lyrics-wise BTD seems to be about love relationships, alcohol, nostalgia, and suicide (or at least dark) themes. AKA is more like white trash(?), Americana/nostalgia, and again dark themes. The two albums overlap the most lyrically, at least reckoned by themes. AKA is way more eclectic in terms of style; whereas BTD has a strict style sense that songs seem compelled to follow. An AKA done more as BTD would sound something like a more interesting Bell/Lynch This Train album. This Train was much less compelling than AKA, but still interesting and beautifully song. However, it suffered from its style cohesion; whereas the melodic strengths of BTD allowed style cohesion to work, imo. I don’t know what a more eclectic sounding BTD could sound like. For what an opinion is worth, Paradise seems more of a blend of AKA/BTD styles, not counting the Yayo overlap, and some drive toward the more commercial. Or maybe this is wishful thinking on my part. Others have divided the question into thinking about what songs on BTD sound most like AKA and vice versa. I’ll opine that Off to the Races, Blue Jeans, Video Games are Lizzy like, but given the breadth of Lizzy’s style, I don’t even know if that’s meaningful to say. I wouldn’t mind a Smarty Lanafied if it were done with a big band (Benny Goodman like) orchestration, but I’m not sure that would be a reflection of a BTD style. Finally, AKA should be re-released just to get rid of that pathology of thinking of Lizzy/Lana as different people. Ditto May Jailer. Also, it might disinhibit her from producing songs in those styles again.

I like Damn You and Hollywood's Dead much more, which I mention because YAB seems like it's from a similar style melody wise. YAB's good as a movie song and I saw somewhere Baz Llurhman, the director, had some input, so maybe "lyrics decay" -- in this song -- could be attributable to that. Do people generally think Adele's Skyfall is subpar from her notable songs? Just wondering. I don't know how to assess Florence, as I'm not as familiar with her work. But I will say her song seemed to be more about her (admittedly awesome) voice than the movie. Finally does the song help us understand the timing of the two covers better? Would it have motivated her to release them if she thought YAB were weak? Or would she be more inclined to release them if she thought the YAB were strong? Just idly speculating.

Glad this thread is still active! Like some others, my playlists just collect leaks/unreleased. So no overlap with BTD:TPE, AKA, Sirens, or God Bless America, except for some interesting demo variants. No thematic groupings, just a helluva lot of diversity. The one below is my favorite because of the slow acoustic songs, which I like to spread out as interludes. I have two other playlists (another 110 mins) and so would buy her next 5 releases sounds-unheard on the strength of these leaks. I would also buy the leaks, if she ever produced them. My favorite transitions: Dum Dum immediately followed by Live or Die sounds like she's accelerating into a new but related song. Axl Rose Husband / Last Girl on Earth, so utterly different, yet they seem related to me. Wish I could have crossfaded those. LDR_More (76mins): 1. Axl Rose Husband 2. Last Girl on Earth 3. Paradise 4. Prom Song 5. Elvis 6. She's Not Me 7. Dum Dum 8. Live or Die 9. Fordham Road 10. I Don't Wanna Go 11. Hundred Dollar Bill (the non-rock blues? version) 12. Push Me Down 13. Lucky Ones (demo) 14. Disco 15. Carmen (Acappela chorus version) 16. Jimmy Necco 17. Get Drunk 18. Jealous Girl 19. Moi Je Joue 20. Trash (Live) 21. Pinup Galore (Live)

It's odd that there is no producer cred on the lanaDelRey video where it says "No description available". Maybe LDR and Barrie snuck into Rick's studio to lay down the track while he was out of town. I know Rick's management said he produced it, but maybe that's Rick or his management covering for Lana's rogue behavior. Not a serious suggestion, but I still have a ways to 25 posts. I wish Nancy would tweet something about their cover. Has Leonard Cohen commented on his cover at all?

I admire her fascination with the past, which is not random. It sets her apart from mainstream pop, I think. I think Barrie did great job (a Scot singing like a Texan, who knew?) and her vocal backings and improv gave some uniqueness, or Lana-ness, despite a faithful cover. I hope, like others, her nostalgia will eventually extend to her own past (Lizzy/May) work, but I won't complain about her new stuff. I think "surprising" is a better word than "random", although random can also mean "cannot predict", which is valid. This is just days before the release of a new single. Very surprising.

"Innovative thinking foundation" should not be put in the same category as outreach/rehab work. Her social work implies volunteering time to accredited orgs. But a new foundation? If she wanted her financial contribution to be tax deductible, the foundation has to be set up as legit in some sense. Can you imagine how complicated that might be (i.e., tax lawyers, various govt reviews and approvals, who knows)? Maybe she spoke too soon about it, but give it some time. Her outreach/rehab pursuits are interesting too. Maybe, she mentions them often so when she writes a song like "Gods and Monsters" we are supposed to think it's more about a personality type that interests her and not a comment on her recent life (unlike some reviews of the Paradise EP I remember).

I wonder whether LDR's interest is Cohen or Janis Joplin, or both? I didn't know what the song was about initially. Youtube comments and videos provided the answer as usual. For Cohen's setup on his live version: at about 2:25 he says he wrote it for Janis. To me the song is unique by being a powerful statement of grief expressed as sarcasm. At least, I can't understand the final lyrics any other way. Of course he thought about her VERY often; you don't write songs about people unless you do. Perhaps that was too obvious to post, but I need 25 posts to unlock secret Lana material ...

Spotify, a user directed radio, has a fair amount of Bardot recordings. All you need is a facebook account to access the free (with commercials) streaming service. They don't have this album, but BB 1964 has the original for the LDR cover.

http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/748-moije-joue-song/?hl=bardot&do=findComment&comment=14654 has other (and consistent/redundant) info to the interview based on PS tweets. I think they both deserve kudos for a fairly unrecognizable cover (extension, mutation, hommage, or whatever) of Brigitte Bardot's - Moi Je Joue song (1964?). The link below gets a video for Bardot's song, which seems quite different. LDR/PS song also samples Bardot's according to the post link I gave. I think that's likely but I'm no Bardot expert. The LDR/PS work seems solidly and deliberately produced (nice layers, interesting complex vocals). It's hard for me to believe it didn't come out as intended. While it's interesting to hear PS speak lowly of MJJ, I wonder if she's just trying to throw off interest in the track (meaning they do want to release it someday). This speculation is in the spirit of the words tattooed on LDR's right hand. As a WAG, Jealous Girl and Hit and Run could also have come from their sessions. Thanks for posting the interview.

My nerdly 2 cents: Sirens has at least 2 masterpieces (which are just songs I think are as good as her other “masterpieces”) and maybe 4 or 5 near misses. So Sirens would be an uncommonly good release relative to average, imo. It is a good example of her “colliding worlds” aesthetic, which I remember her mentioning in an interview (don’t know which one). That is, there are two meanings to the word “sirens”, one suggested by her moniker May *Jailer*, and songs like For K, and the other, of course, suggested by her and her face on the cover. Also some of the songs are both beautiful and tragic. While it can seem repetitive on one listen all the way through, the similar songs (for me) makes it harder to memorize, and perhaps the songs stay fresher longer for that reason. Sirens is an awesome contrast to what follows it (… AKA Lizzy Grant), both in song content and singing style. I don’t think the Jailer style of songwriting has left her. Not counting the unreleased songs in that style, Bel Air and Body Electric seem Jailer-ish, imo. As with … AKA Lizzy Grant, I wonder at the motivation for not having Sirens commercially available and/or I wish she would talk about it more.

Adele shows pop music isn't supermodel fixated, and granted Adele's voice is great and compensates her looks (which btw can sometimes be "hot"). However, Adele also sings in nostalgic R&B, which is neither too confrontational nor disturbing. Perhaps the comforting familiarity of her genre and her voice allow her to succeed (incredibly well). But what if Adele's song style (not her voice) hadn't been like that? Kate Bush may be interesting to consider. Her voice is as good as Adele's, and she's not too into obsessive love themes drawn from life experiences, so she might have written the same songs without supermodel looks. Did having those looks in her early career get her anything? Perhaps she could not have been as innovative/disturbing/challenging -- in pop music -- as she was, without them. Her physical beauty (including her voice) might have fixed mainstream attention long enough for the mainstream to appreciate the music. Or maybe her looks just allowed her to do what she wanted musically (for example, the non-commercial/avant-garde parts of Hounds of Love, although she still needed great pop songs there to succeed). When LDR is compared to Kate Bush (which happens sometimes), I take this to mean that LDR could be challenging/disturbing and have her looks/style sugar coat things long enough to be appreciated. The sexually charged nature of LDR songs is one way she might be "challenging/disturbing". However, another more interesting way, imo (and more in line with Kate, I think), is if she allowed songs like "Axl Rose Husband" and "Hit and Run" to co-exist on the same commercial CD. Or maybe she'll think of a different way to challenge and disturb, or maybe she'll become more conventional. Waiting on pins and needles to find out what happens.

I've never heard LDR say anything specific about Sirens. The closest I remember (don't have a source) was her referring to some material she brought to a bunch of labels, who then told her "it would never sell". Are there any good interviews with her specifically talking about Sirens? I voted AKA was better, but Sirens still made me love LDR's songwriting more, even after buying BTD and becoming familiar with AKA. I wish she'd release Sirens as is. If she's unsure of the quality, she could sell it digitally for a low price. I'm sure it would sell.

The Pitchfork interview snippet (posted earlier by burninparadise) says the leaked track was not the intended one, but rather a bad version of it. But if "My Bitch" really existed, and it was more in the style of AR's debut release (without the "cliched shit"), why wouldn't he have released it just to counter the leak? I'm thinking "My Bitch" is actually quite a bit like the leaked version, but he just couldn't make it fit his sense of the album. If Ridin is like My Bitch here are some idle speculations about why he may have felt awkward about it (based on about 2 listens of AR's release) : AR and LDR have significant rap parts in Ridin, whereas on the rest of AR's album other female "featured-artists" appear only as backing vocals/choruses/vocal beats. In contrast, featured male rappers actually get to rap (I think). Would this be giving LDR too prominent a role in the hip hop community? Ridin is happier (and cutesier) than most of AR's album (ironic given LDR's sadcore reputation). The song has a Kreayshawn catch phrase in AR's part ("one big room full of bad bitches", see Gucci Gucci and Bumpin Bumpin). Maybe he regrets that, although the nod to Kreay, given LDR's prominent rap, makes the song seem like a nod to female rapping in general (a good thing, imo). His release was pretty good without Ridin. But he should let Ridin go for a future LDR release. To my ears, it sounds mostly like her anyway.

Bird Condo King said: <I can't see a quote button, that post> "Honestly I think there are many casual fans that don't even know that she has had a released album under another name before, so I guess that I'm fine with the album never being re-released because it makes it special (I don't know if it makes sense)." Tori Amos and Alanis Morissette both have initial releases that they let go out of print. It didn't make them special; it just made them harder to hear. AKA should not be treated like that, imo. I just worry that not releasing AKA (as it was made) makes the wrong kind of statements, namely: the album was a failure, or that people that don't know it, won't like it, or that pop music should not be given the chance to go more that way.

This link backgrounds the strange case of this CD from perspective of 5 points: http://www.mtvhive.com/2012/01/30/lana-del-rey-first-album-5-points-records-interview/ It doesn't say why AKA disappeared, really. Member Myriam and Member IamThatGirlLily translated a recent French interview, which says something about why she doesn't re-release. I think I've quoted Myriam's but the link is to Lily's and Myriam's a little before it: http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/1205-lana-covers-les-inrocks/page-2?hl=%2Bfrench+%2Btranslation&do=findComment&comment=29555 "Interviewer: Among these new songs, you chose to revive Yayo, one of the songs of your 2010 album under the name of Lizzy Grant. Will this album ever be re-released? LDR: Like I did for Yayo, I would like to redo certain songs like Kill Kill and Mermaid Motel. They mean a lot to me, they are the most autobiographical out of all the songs, my sprees to Coney Island … But I don’t like their production, I can’t re-release them as they are. I recorded them 6 years ago, an eternity… Yayo was a fundamental moment in my life, a trigger, my first video." Wanting to redo EVERY song on AKA might mean she wants to disconnect AKA's material from 5 points, but apparently it's just certain songs. I'd really hate to think that she'd leave any AKA songs behind. Also, I don't think Yayo was that much changed, supporting a disconnect idea. I'd hope she'd just redo what she wants and place it on new releases (like she's doing?). But I'd also hope she'd just let AKA resume at Itunes and Amazon right now. CDs would be nice, but if she's unhappy about it, maybe digital would be less painful. The original artwork and titles, something like "Lana Del Ray aka Lizzy Grant" copyright 2010 by Lana Del Rey, works fine for me, because it says it's not a new release, and historical accuracy is never bad, imo. If ever "May Jailer: Sirens" (2005?) were similarly released, people would realize that name changing is her authentic strategy (actually, it's the use of her real name that is inauthentic, LOL). To me a re-release of AKA is important. I want to get a legal copy, and a commercial buy says "hey, I like songs like this", and with enough of them the album can have an influence. For that reason, it matters more (to me, of course) that AKA have the chance to sell than whether it will sell a lot (rather douchey on my part, because it's not my career). One would also think re-releasing AKA (and releasing May Jailer) would make it easier for her to produce her leaks/unreleased catalog. She'd be less typecast to a style with her older stuff available commercially. And if she wants to produce newer stuff in parallel, who could complain about that!

Here's what the meanest US reactions were (according to the website below), as well as a counter from the same website with some nice reactions (including one from hipsterrunnoff, probably misinformed on that one, but the quote is nice). http://www.buzzfeed.com/gavon/26-meanest-quotes-from-reviews-of-lana-del-reys-n http://www.buzzfeed.com/lindseyweber/13-nicest-quotes-from-reviews-of-lana-del-reys-ne I think we all agree she worked hard enough after her hype disaster that she can not be dismissed from pop music. I would say that some of the nasty reviews qualify as poor quality reviews (more about extra-musical issues than the music). Her response of letting the fans/marketplace defend her and not getting in the fray was the most appropriate. I don't think critics went as far as character assasination, but I do think personal attack is an appropriate description (I think she used those words in the recent German interviews, there are now two). Other than illuminati influence on the critics (LOL), I can't explain such reviews. Some other thoughts: The group of anti-fans is shrinking in number. The Paradise EP did not get dissed much. Both CDs are, in fact, charting right now. Touring is a complicated. At least in Europe she's touring with her boyfriend and travelling to exotic places. I don't think her not wanting to tour the US is a reaction to bad press. More like limiting an activity that is taxing. Also she did perform in the US before her "World" tour; she just didn't do it everywhere. Praise be to Youtube (and the fans that uploaded) for letting me experience some of it. Major pop artists seem to like/respect/recommend/tolerate her. They are on her side, not the critics. SNL performances were controversial and not bad. Saying they were bad, like it's a fact, isn't objectively true because at least as many people liked as disliked them. I for one went back to the SNL Blue Jeans (LanaDelReyVevo?) many times because I enjoyed it. Some critics even recognize this. A possible overreaction on her part, maybe, was changing her mind about re-releasing "... aka Lizzy Grant". If critical reaction did play a role, that would be a major bummer to me. I wish she would re-release that, and release May Jailer, and also put a dent in her unreleased/leaked catalog. It's the surest way to flip the bird at reviewers, who would get brain hemorrhages trying to figure out how to review them.